Technology

At a guess, such cooperation would undermine Lenovo's profit margin and would thus be a non-starter for them.

Enter government regulation, to pinch corporations by the ear and drag them to doing what's right for society.

It seems to me that Lenovo’s repairably is more affected by that iFixit partnership than the opposite. I don’t see anything factually wrong or suspicious in the article.

As someone who has changed a laptop keyboard before.

That picture says it all.

I use iFixit's guides all the time, so I would hope that their score isn't affected by it. I've seen them as being fairly good at their role.

This is true, but they're also not wrong that fully-modular USB-C ports is an absolutely huge win. It's one of the biggest things when it comes to laptops these days.

It's unlikely that fact will change the repairability of the devices. They risk too much by posting biased and false information on that end.

There's a difference between 'repairable' and 'upgradable.'

Absolutely! I've got a Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5 (laptop/tablet thingy).

I've upgraded/replaced the ssd - no problem.

Unfortunately, this laptop has an issue with the keyboard: the left section/panel intermittently stops sending inputs. Meaning, keys like escape, a, w, shift, l-control - just stop (even in the bios). I'd read that they keyboard "collects" static which causes problems with certain sections of the keyboard.

I thought I'd see how difficult it would be to replace the keyboard. I watched a teardown video, and of course you need to remove everything... but I lost it when, the person in the video used a heat gun to melt "plastic rivits" that connected the keyboard to the motherboard case. Then with the replacement keyboard needed to remelt the plastic rivits.

This laptop is not repairable. In fact, I swore I'd never buy another Lenovo again as a result. ... but if their focus is on making them repairable (and their recent partnership with GrapheneOS) - I might be eating crow tonight.

The "upgradability" part in a small laptop is questionable to me, anyway.

The GPU is really compromised in that chassis, as having it in a slot compromises cooling big time, and limits how much power it can use. And while I love upgradable RAM for the CPU... it'd be better if they used faster CAMM modules. Many other brands have upgradable SSDs/WiFi.

Swappable ports are awesome, no question.

...But honestly, I'd rather have a smaller chassis, bigger GPU and better cooling right off the bat, like a Zephyrus chassis. And have it reparable, but not compromise the chassis so severely to make it upgradable with really limited options.

A think pad t series is not really much harder to take apart than a framework. Just more screws and fewer magnets. The screen is probably an exception however.

Yeah I like Lenovo in general too! I have an Ideapad rather than a Thinkpad, but this is my second Lenovo and they've both lasted for ages, never had any weird problems, played nice with Linux etc.

They're usually also well supported on Linux, and even sell them with Ubuntu pre-installed. Generally not a terrible brand.

First, you have to define "comparable". These are Enterprise-grade laptops. Their class includes the Dell Latitude and HP Elitebook. It doesn't include anything you will ever find at Best Buy. It might be tempting to do so, since your visible specs like CPU and RAM are the same. But they really aren't the same.

Within their class, Lenovo has (for over a decade) been noticeably more expensive than their counterparts. Roughly $100-150 more per unit for the T4x0/T14 vs a Latitude 74x0 (now Dell Pro) or an Elitebook 840.

Current prices are: HP Elitebook 8 G1i 14 - Core Ultra 5 236v, 16GB/512GB, $1249

Dell Pro 14 - Core Ultra 5 236v, 16GB/512GB, $1659

Lenovo Thinkpad T14 Gen 6 - Core Ultra 235u, 16GB/512GB, $1809.

All have integrated graphics.

I don't think the detailed specs/pricing for Gen7 (what the article is about) has been announced yet. I would expect it to be in line with previous generations, since their 9/10 repairability score was.